South Side Boy


Book Description

"Though no particular accomplishments in my life warrant an autobiography, I feel like the man on the television insurance commercial when he says, “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.” I don’t know that everything I relate is 100 percent accurate, but I have made every effort to tell the truth. The accounts and descriptions I give you are how I perceived them, and my memory may have faded over the many years in some instances. While I have made an effort to adhere to chronological order, I believe that a strict order of events might become confusing. Subject by subject, rather than year by year, seemed more orderly. I also developed the subject matter by focusing on what I consider to be defining moments in my life."




Southside Provisional


Book Description

"One of the more important, courageous and insightful books on the Troubles, all the more so because of the southern angle. I predict that it will be remembered for a long time." – Ed Moloney, journalist and author It's August 1969 and Northern Ireland is burning. Catholics are marching for civil rights and loyalist attacks have brought the British army onto the streets to quell the riots. In the middle-class suburbs of south Dublin, the political atmosphere that is transforming the North finds an unlikely convert in law student Kieran Conway. Determined to play his part, he goes to London to join the IRA. Following his training, he participates in gun fights, bank raids and intelligence-gathering sorties in England, on the Irish border and in Derry, where he encounters the young Martin McGuinness. Arrested during a British Army raid on a safe house, he is imprisoned in Crumlin Road prison, where he participates in the successful hunger strike for political status. He is transferred to Long Kesh, where he becomes adjutant to the legendary Billy McKee. On his release, he reports back to the IRA and is appointed to its general headquarters staff, where he serves during the controversial ceasefire of 1975. Profoundly disillusioned by the dysfunction within the movement, he resigns in late 1975 and returns to university, although he rejoins the IRA in 1981 before eventually leaving for good in 1993. Southside Provisional provides candid portraits of the leading IRA figures of the 1970s, alongside detailed accounts of the politics, organisation, training and operational methods of the IRA. Throughout the story, Conway's personal journey from teenage middle-class Anglophile to committed IRA activist is set against the political and military developments of the 1970s. He is not afraid to address difficult issues such as the IRA bombing campaign and its response to the loyalist killing of nationalists. Honest, fearless and frank, Southside Provisional is a fascinating first-hand account of Conway's time within Ireland's most secretive and notorious organisation.




Damaged


Book Description

"Last night I made her mine. She's never been with anyone else, and if I have it my way, she will never be anyone else's." -Jaxson KellyI'm Damaged. Dark. Haunted.A shell of a man with no hope for a future.And then I met her...Annabelle Locke, innocent and pure.The kind of woman that could bring a man to his knees with lust and desire.Saving her that night felt like redemption from my past.Falling for her was my downfall.I thought I could have a taste and walk away.Now the shadows from my past have returned and I'll stop at nothing to keep her safe.Even if that means I have to lose her forever.She can't know my secrets.She can't know the truth of who I really am.Or what I've done.But maybe it's too late... Dive into this steamy, passionate bad boy romance today! This is book 1 in the South Side Boys series. It is a stand-alone novel with no cheating, plenty of steam and an HEA




Our America


Book Description

The award-winning creators of National Public Radio's "Ghetto Life 101" and "Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse" combine talents with a young photographer to show what life is like in one of the country's darkest places: Chicago's Ida B. Wells housing project. Photos.




The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold


Book Description

"Billy Boy Arnold, born in 1935, is one of the few native Chicagoans who both cultivated a career in the blues and stayed in Chicago. His perspective on Chicago's music, people, and places is rare and valuable. Arnold has worked with generations of musicians-from Tampa Red and Howlin' Wolf and to Muddy Waters and Paul Butterfield-on countless recordings, witnessing the decline of country blues, the dawn of electric blues, the onset of blues-inspired rock, and more. Here, with writer Kim Field, he gets it all down on paper-including the story of how he named Bo Diddley Bo Diddley"--




Yummy


Book Description

A graphic novel based on the true story of Robert Yummy Sandifer, an 11-year old African American gang member from Chicago who shot a young girl and was then shot by his own gang members.




A South Side Love Story


Book Description

Tricey, Vic, and Lyric are three friends from the Southside of Chicago fighting in the tumultuous war between finding the one amongst the chaotic sea of Mr. Wrongs. After breaking up with her baby's father, Memphis, Vic is in the arms of one new beau after the next; turning her heartbreak into a life filled with bald-headed h*e shenanigans. Vic's new approach to love terribly clashes with Asa's uncontrollable need for being more than her next sneaky link. However, Vic's refusal to commit doesn't keep Asa's alpha male, street swag from trying desperately to blow up the wall that she has built around her terribly damaged heart. As Vic runs from Asa's attempts to woo her, Tricey has done the unthinkable: fallen in love with her friend-with-benefits. After the heart-rendering endings of her past relationships, Akbar was the ideal replacement. Everything was perfect about him... except for his pregnant wife. After fighting against it, she falls in love and realizes that she needs to walk away from the man that she can't imagine living without. Then enters "Blood" the dope boy ready to sweep her off of her feet. But can she find the courage to walk away from the explosive chemistry between she and Akbar in order to enjoy the life that Blood wants to give her? While Tricey is stuck between a dope boy and her married love, Lyric and Salem are approaching their wedding date. As they prepare to spend the rest of their lives together, Salem is under the impression that he has chosen the perfect wife-to-be. Lyric struggles with this cloak of perfection as she figures out a way to quietly end the affair she's had on the side since the day she met her soon-to-be-husband. This is only the beginning of this Urban Romance, which is filled with love that hurts, betrayals, and feels tragically unsustainable. Packed with a sea of characters that add their own two cents of drama and contribute to the shocking and heartrending end, this love story is of three homegirls, not only falling in love with the one, but also falling in love with themselves. * This is a re-release of the previously published book, Love, Sex, Lies. Since this book was written when I was very young, I wanted to give it the quality and attention that these characters deserve. This story has been revamped. Changes have been made, and many scenes have been added.




Southside Kid


Book Description

Welcome to Chicago's Southside L. Curt Erler comes from a large, hardworking family and in his autobiography, Southside Kid; he pays homage to strong family values, a simpler time at the tail end of WWII. The author recalls his childhood growing up on Chicago's Southside. The family gathering around Mom's Philco radio listening to Glenn Miller and Frankie Laine. There's dancing and drag racing on the East Side. It's all here, baseball, movie matinees at the Avalon Theater, young love and Friday night dances with the St. Felicitas kids. Moving into the mid-50's you'll find yourself surrounded by Rock and Roll and the sounds of Chicago's jazz joints. Music always played a big part in "The Kid's" life, and he provides an unparalleled written soundtrack that is bound to provoke happy memories. Southside Kid's narrator is the only non-Catholic attending a Catholic school. Young Curt was fortunate and clever enough to make the best of this rather trying opportunity. He tells of his Yankee adventures in the South and a few altercations on Chicago's Southside streets. This book is a wonderful and wildly fun journey down a memory lane filled with laughter and high jinks that leaves its reader with a sense of longing. Everyone should have a childhood that is this much fun and a life that is this rich. In fact, for L. Curt Erler it isn't a life, it is a celebration and it is what makes this memoir alternately so touching and so hilarious.




Plan B


Book Description

Is this happily ever after? Lucy has her life planned out: she'll graduate and then join her boyfriend, Luke, at college in Austin. She'll become a Spanish teacher and of course they'll get married. So there's no reason to wait, right? They try to be careful. But then Lucy gets pregnant. Now, none of Lucy's options are part of her picture-perfect plan. Together, she and Luke will have to make the most difficult decision of their lives.




Everywhere You Don't Belong


Book Description

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence “A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . Bump’s meditation on belonging and not belonging, where or with whom, how love is a way home no matter where you are, is handled so beautifully that you don’t know he’s hypnotized you until he’s done.” —Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.




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